In 2005, someone put on the table that, perhaps, the time has come to decongest Madrid from transit trips. That is, those that start outside Madrid and end outside Madrid.
The idea is not new by any means. The M-30 or the M-40 They were born with the clear objective of keeping cars away from the city center. More kilometers for the driver but with the promise of taking much less time to reach our destination. The problem is that the municipalities and neighborhoods adjacent to the M-40 are enormous in Madrid. Some even merge with the city itself.
As a result of this problem, the M-50. The highway finished being consolidated in the early 2000s. It has a total length of 85 kilometers and with it you can go from Las Rozas on the A-6 to San Sebastián de los Reyes, already on the A-1, surrounding Madrid on its southern side. It serves as a connection to the entire southern belt of the city, passing next to Móstoles, Leganés or Getafe but also next to Pozuelo, San Fernando de Henares or Barajas.
The connection, however, is not closed in the north. That is, there is no direct connection A-1 and A-6 or vice versa, it is necessary to surround the entire southern framework because right now no highway crosses that space. The closest is the M-40 which, as we say, is next to the capital.
But what if we go further? What if we try to eliminate traffic in Madrid with a radial highway that links all the provincial capitals that surround Madrid and without having to go through this autonomous community?
This is what was proposed more than 20 years ago and now they want to recover.
The M-70, an old Castilian desire
Although it sounds utopian, the truth is that carrying out the Pentagon Project or the M-70, as the idea has been known since 2005, this idea has been raised more or less seriously.
In fact, that year it was included in the Strategic Infrastructure Plan for Madrid just as they collected in 20Minutes and was considered of General Interest of the State as it was part of the Strategic Infrastructure and Transportation Plan (PEIT) 2008. The crisis, however, wiped out any reference to the project.
That name of “Project Pentagon” It is because its construction would create a road network with this shape by joining Segovia, Ávila, Toledo and Guadalajara, passing through other municipalities of considerable size such as Ocaña, Maqueda or Tarancón. The name M-70 would not exist as such at the moment because, really, the objective would be to connect highways between said capitals in a kind of Frankenstein that would allow movement between all the radial roads near Madrid but without the need to enter said autonomous community.
The last consistent reference to the project is a statement by Emiliano García-Page in 2024 who made reference to the fact that the connection of Cuenca with the A-5 through an extension of the A-40 would make the latter the M-70 of the city. And at the time of projecting that future M-70, it was already projected that the A-40 would be the road that would largely structure the project.
This road, the A-40 It is a connection that aims to unite Ávila with Teruel. At the moment, on the west side, the road has been passable since 2012 between Maqueda (on the A-5) to Mocejón (past Toledo). At that point the highway is cut off as it passes through Aranjuez (the only point where it touches the Community of Madrid) and extends again from Ocaña to Cuenca.
At the moment, that Madrid section and the connection from Maqueda to Ávila is in the study phase. And to finish this old dream of the Castiles, it would be necessary to extend the highway to Teruel from Cuenca, whose preliminary project has already been completed and approved.
The concept of M-70, however, would be realized with the existing connection between Ávila and Segovia and, most complicated, the connection of the latter with Guadalajara. The “simplest” thing (yes, in many quotes) would be to create a connection between Segovia and the A-1 and reuse the latter in the direction of Madrid to unfold the possible ring road taking advantage of the route of the N-320. The latter connects the A-1 highway with Cuenca passing through Guadalajara.
However, this Segovia-Guadalajara connection seems really complicated given the geographical accidents along the way.
Despite this, as we said, a hypothetical M-70 ring road It would be an amalgamation of different highways or linked highways, not the construction of an entire ring road. It would, however, be a possibility to alleviate some traffic on the east-west and west-east routes without passing through Madrid.
The A-40 wants to be that solution in the south but there were already those who dreamed 20 years ago of carrying it out also in the north.
Photo | Command on Wikimedia and Google Maps
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